


Sun From The Heaving Sea

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:57:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah and Andrew, and something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sun From The Heaving Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dr_Madwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Madwoman/gifts).



She slaps at his hand, almost catching his fingertips but not quite. "I said _stop_ it, Andrew. I'm not speakin' to you, much less any of that business."

He smiles and his usually somber gray eyes shine softly. "What other woman would not speak to me for the great mortal sin of reading a poem to her? Tell me that much and I'll die a happy man."

Sarah pointedly ignores the question and concentrates on the paper she's reading, on the small piece of cake she's thoughtfully forking up. _It's his own fault, I've told him a hundred times to not read that sappy, maudlin trash to me and if_ \--

Gentle fingers are tugging at her hem again and she stabs threateningly with her fork in his general direction. She's irritable and tired and her menses are due any day and she wants to eat everything in sight, and then he had to start with his poetry readin' of the most sentimental, romantic nonsense he could find and she's just not in the mood. She grumbles at him. "Jus' leave me alone. I'm not fit for any kind of company, particularly the male variety, jus' right now. I want to eat my cake and get some of that lace done and then go to bed."

Andrew watches her speculatively. She's often irritable during her monthlies but this unease in her body is new, the fatigue and the weepiness. She isn't one to cry, ever, and he had found her sobbing over a few dropped stitches earlier in the day. He has an idea - a tiny, barely kindled idea that he refuses to feed - but he keeps his peace. She'll know for sure long before he will anyway, and there's no use making guesses. He smiles at her again, soft and pretty in her nightdress with her hair spilling around her. She hasn't braided it for the night yet and it's a long spill of dark curls over her shoulders, and he thinks about them, the two of them together. There's something to be said for two broken pieces together, there's a lot to be said for two dark hearts facing one another. They aren't perfect, not by far, but their scars and their lines and their damage seem to line up right, seem to make a bond that holds it all in one piece. There's gaps and there's cracks and there's chinks where the wind gets through, but to quote some poet he can't remember the name of --

_We're all cracked. The cracks are how the light gets in._

Sarah looks up, a smudge of icing on her face. "See somethin' ye' like?" Her mouth bends into an unwilling but loving half-smile and he leans forward, wipes the bit of chocolate away. 

"I do. Does this mean you're speaking to me again?"

She sighs and finishes her last bite of sweet. "S'pose I am, Mr. Lang. It'd be rude to sleep with a man I weren't speakin' to." He takes her plate and fork to the sink and she wanders into the living room, curls onto one end of the sofa and takes up her tatting. Squints at the lace, begins picking out the bad stitches to restart the pattern line. 

Andrew follows, thinks to take back up - silently this time, God help him - where he left off in his book of verse. Before he can sit, Sarah huffs a sigh and tosses the lacework back into her basket. "I can't deal with it t'night, not in the mood."

He glances over. "You don't seem to be in the mood for anything, darling girl. What is it? What's bothering you today?" She shrugs, pulls the nightdress over her knees, hugs them to her chest.

"Jus' can't get easy, dunno why." She gives him a sidelong glance through half-lowered lashes and her cheeks flush a little. Something, perhaps, could give her ease, could put this strangeness to rest, but she'll be damned if she's going to reward him after that endless torture earlier. Sarah's not being dishonest when she says she doesn't know; it's just that all day something has seemed different, something in the air, something in the way things feel. She's tried telling herself it's just her hormones getting the best of her, but if so, it's something brand new. She's never felt this odd alien presence --

_No. Surely not._

She counts mentally, then immediately slams the door on that entire spectrum of thought.

"Andrew?"

Her husband looks up from his book again, arches his sandy brows in question. She looks at him intently and he shakes his head a little, lifts his shoulders in a tiny shrug. _  
_

"Andrew."

"...yes, Sarah?"

She huffs again and rolls her eyes. _For all of his poetry readin', he sure as hell can't take a hint._

" _Andrew_."

_"Sarah?"_

She glares at him and he gives her a mystified look, goes back to his reading _. Fine then. If that's how he wants to be, he can just miss out._

Andrew bites his lip to keep from laughing. He can't deny her for long - he's never been able to - but if she wanted to punish him for a loving tribute like a poem, then she can just sit and wait until he's good and ready. He hears her rooting in her sewing basket again, taking out her knitting, working quick stitches on the winter socks she's making for him. The quick, efficient click of the needles lulls him as he finishes a page, turns to another. Another fifteen minutes, he reckons; he can risk that much before she actually comes at him with the needles intent on damage. Another grin flashes and he hides it behind his book.

Minutes tick by and her needles tap and his pages turn and he watches her, gazes at the long spill of her hair and the high color of her face and the curve of lashes against high-angled cheek and while it's amusing, their back-and-forth, their gentle tit-for-tat, punishment for one is agony for the other, so he puts his book aside and goes to her, takes the knitting away and tucks it carefully into her notions basket.

"What do ye' think you're doin'?"

His answer is to begin unbuttoning his crisp white shirt, pausing to push a tendril of hair out of her face. She shivers at the slight touch and pushes herself back onto the sofa, turning, dropping one leg to the floor. "God, about time, then." Her eyelids are heavy and she's plucking impatiently at the material of her gown as she watches Andrew undress, as she watches the shirt fall away, the undershirt pulled over his head. She reaches over, runs her hands over the lightly muscled torso, scratches gently. "Can you not undress any faster than that?"

"So demanding, Mrs. Lang. I'm sure I could go slower, I'm almost positive. Let me see --" His movements slow; his fingers work impossibly slow at the buttons of his trousers and she groans, sits up, slaps his hands away. Roughly, quickly, she strips him of his trousers and shorts and socks until he's naked in front of her and she lets out a ragged breath, runs her fingers up his legs, meets his gaze before leaning forward and pressing the lightest of kisses to his hardening cock. 

_"Sarah."_

"Mhm?" She carries on, kissing gently over and around his shaft, dragging her lips gently across the heavy testes, and his hands are working into her hair, kneading compulsively, tenderly. He's still not used to this, her pleasuring him with her mouth; she had more or less pounced on him a few months back and told him in no uncertain terms that they would try it, and if he hated it, they never had to do it again. So they had; taking turns, slowly, exploring.

He hadn't hated it.

Still, when she closes her hot mouth over him, he tries desperately to remain still, to not thrust; he doesn't want to hurt her or do anything to cause her discomfort but when she moves her tongue over him like _that_ and pushes him deep into her throat like _that_ , he can hardly --

"Sarah, god, _please._ "

She pulls back reluctantly with a smug cat grin and her pink tongue caresses her pink lips and he's pushing her onto her back, hiking her nightdress up around her waist, over her breasts, she pulls it over her head and drops it. His mouth is on her breasts now, pulling gently at her nipples and there's a new sensitivity, a new tenderness and the pleasure is skewering through her as his hips push between creamy thighs and rock against her; Sarah holds his head against her, shuddering, encouraging him with hotly whispered words, returning his movements with upward thrusts and he pushes down and she pushes up and a satisfied moan spirals out of her as his cock slides into her, pushing, pushing, filling her, and her hands travel over his back, clutch at his ass to pull him inside as deep as she can.

"Fuck, darlin', _fuck_ , that's it."

Andrew slides his hands under her, grips her shoulders to hold her tightly in place, begins to stroke into her harder, working her cunt deeply, thoroughly, timing his movements with her strong demanding pulls, with the upward arch of her body. He revels in her hoarse cries, her pleasured profanities, in the way she gives and takes, in the way she doesn't merely lay passive under him but strives, works, lays herself and him bare and he thinks again there's something to be said for him and her, they aren't perfect but --

She raises her legs, grips his body tightly between her calves, increases the pace of her rocking and her face is gorgeously flushed; that's the pornography of her, that deep pink flush that travels over her breasts and shoulders and face before she comes, that's the erotic thing for him. His own climax is building and he pushes and she pulls and she's frantically grinding her clitoris against his body when he strokes deep into her and she's not far now, she's close, he can feel her beginning to clench around his cock, can feel her beginning to milk him and that tiny kindled thought sparks again and he thinks if she is, if she is then --

Sarah gasps, pulls his face down to kiss him, bites tenderly at his mouth and licks the corners of his lips and suddenly that alien feeling is gone and replaced with something new and that door reopens and she knows now, she knows as sure as she knows her own name, as sure as she knows that she loves this man that --

Her orgasm shatters over her and she screams into his shoulder, beats helplessly at his shoulders with shaking fists as it washes through her and with it a hurricane of images, of ghosts, of dreams; this man marrying her, this house slowly coming into a home, needles flashing side-by-side, a rush of blood, a bar of soap, everything wrong she's ever been and everything right she wants to be and then --

He follows her, gasping and heaving as he spills inside of her and his arms tighten down and she holds him securely and he whispers her name and lets go because these lights can explode, this roar of sound in his head can pass through because he will come to and it will be she and him and there will no blood and no bullets and no screams of agony or dead eyes staring but only warm living flesh and tender hands and eyes that hold no judgment over him and so he falls knowing she'll catch him again, knowing that she is his home and his shelter and his harbor and perhaps even --

Afterwards, they lay together for a few long moments, closely tangled on the small sofa and his head rests in the hollow of her shoulder and he thinks again, there is something to be said for them. Something to be said for something not perfect. His hand drifts down and gently lights over her stomach, curving protectively.

She strokes his hair, presses her lips to his forehead, and she thinks not for the first time that she can be something else, she can. If he saw something good, then it's there, because he's the best thing she's ever known and if he sees something better, something not stained, something not blood and shame written on her body, then just maybe it's there. Her hand folds over his, resting as it is over her smooth belly, and their fingers intertwine.

They carry so many shadows between them; shadows of death and pain and gore and betrayal, so many that Sarah fears sometimes they'll be consumed by all the darkness, all of the not-good, all of the once-was, but more and more often now, she thinks they've outrun it. Somehow, together, they've managed to shake off the night-black shackles and let some kind of daybreak in, and now she has their child inside of her - she's sure of it now - and she's frightened, terribly so, by so many things, but maybe this is what the new day brought, maybe this is what the sun made. Maybe this is the clean, the not-tainted, the fresh start.

Maybe this is the light.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from "Gates of Dawn" by Secret Garden. The setting and characterization of Andrew Lang both belong to the brilliant Dr. Madwoman, a far better writer than I.


End file.
